Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1887-11-18
GROWTH OF SOCIALISM.
WAR BETWEEN HOUSE OF HAVE
AND HOUSE OF WANT.

How 1t Has Been Going on on This Green
Earth Since the First Government Was
Tormed-St. Simon, Charles Fourier, st.
Just, Karl Marx and Others.
The struggle between labor and capital is,
unfortunately, no new thing. Differences of
condition first arise from differences in char
acter; but in all progressive societies there is
tendency for a fortune once created to in
crease at an increasing ratio. The capitalist
gets yearly increasing percentage of
rapidly increasing product. Such seasons
were seen in England just after the Napo-
leonic wars, and in the United States for
decade or more after the close Of the civil
war. But the best thought of the best minds
in modern society has been directed to the
task of checking or correcting this tendency
to RECOMMENDATION; and it is now claimed
that in England and the United States at
least, the tendency is for capital to get a
smaller and labor a larger share of their
joint product. It only remains to add that
this is firmly denied by the discontinued, and
that, if true, the process would he too slow
| for the impatient-hence the thousand and
one plans for correcting social inequalities,
with their ardent apostles, from the Fourier
tie to the Anarchist from Robert Owen to
August Spies.
There is a popular error TO the effect that
the Chicago massacre of May 4, 1886, was
unique-in truth, it was the latest among
many hundred similar attempts at the same
end. The tendency of property to pass from the
many to the few was among the first OBJ
served social phenomena. In the dawn of
history Egypt appears with land held in small
allotlnents and a general condition Of COM
fort; few centuries later we find the land
owned by the few the mass of laborers slaves.
In Greece the same social phenomena were
repeated, with the variations incident to
place and race. Early in the Eleventh cen
fury B. G. the desperation of the mortgaged
farmer and tho landless poor threatened such
disorders that Scion prevailed upon the peo-
pie to enact a sweeping confiscation of debts;
the mortgage monuments were thrown down
and by radical Gland REFORM the soil
passed under the control of actual cultiva-
tors-for a while. The political contest be-
tween the aristoi and the polloi c'best" and
"many') continual through all Greek his
tory, with bloody tumults and varying for
tunes; and the struggles Of the Attic demos
C'people'o have furnished illustrations fol-
uncounted thousands Of appeals in oil suose
quent ages to the various "democracies," tx
whom that demos gave name.
IN tne Roman republic tne struggle pe
tween aristoi and demos soon took the form
Of a contest between patricians and plebeians
then between the wealthy and the poor, anC
finally between the senatorial party and thu
common people The democracy succeeded
in having the Licinian law passed-that NJ
man should hold more than 500 jugera (33
acres of land-but the aristocracy soon de
feated its execution. The brothers Gracch
devoted their lives and fortunes to attempt
to revive this law and secure others in aid o
the poor; the elder brother, Tiberius Sempro
MUS, had secured the revival of the law, and